Parenting matters!

I have repeated this fact so many times to my clients that I sound like a stuck record: parenting is not offered as a degree of education; it is a lifetime on the job training. I have also said that there are no good or bad parents, or good or bad off-springs. But in spite of it all, I come across absolutely resistant parents, who insist on believing that there is something seriously wrong in the way their child behaves, and go on this blame game and labeling trip, which only antagonizes the child further. They have done all they could for their child; they have given the child whatever he or she wanted; they only wanted them to be ‘good’ in return! Yet their children turn out to be incarnation of the devils, the way they go on about the so-called misbehavior of their children.
Take the case of this set of parents, who, according to them have given the child the best of everything: and they fail to understand why the child is refusing to go to school. The fact of attending school is treated by he child as a carrot for manipulating the parents! He demands the latest computer gizmo, or a night out, failing which he would threaten to bunk school till his demands are met! And the parents have this attitude of having sired an ungrateful child, who is not able to appreciate all they have done for their child.
Can we please understand here, that satisfying every want of a child without understanding whether it is a want or a need, creates a child who turns out with the world owes me syndrome? The child would expect the sun to stop if he wants to, simply because the first adults in his life did not teach him the concept of refusal of a demand, and how to handle rejection and unmet needs. The parents think that gratitude in a child would create a child of their dreams; on the contrary, they haven’t even allowed the child to appreciate what he or she would get, for the simple reason that they jump up to fulfill all that the child asks for, let alone experience gratitude. Not allowing a child to take age-related decisions, doing everything for a child, so that he can ‘enjoy life’, not letting him face consequences of his behavior, and then finally presenting the child as a ogre they wonder who created, is a lot of work for a counselor! Can we please understand that denying a child his demand does not convey your lack of love, as much as fulfilling his every whim does not prove the extent of it!

Mohana Narayanan
November 17,2010